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Brush up on spelling

Spelling tests tend to be a weekly occurrence at primary school. Some children embrace the challenge and enjoy learning their spellings. Some absolutely dread them and get very anxious about being tested. Some children aren’t too interested and don’t really see the point.

Our role is to encourage our children to be spelling test ready by finding fun ways for them to practice at home – here are some ideas.

DIY

Many kids love to learn independently and it can make them feel very grown up. For DIY spelling test prep have your child took at a word and copy it twice, then turn the paper and write it from memory. Next they simply check themselves to see whether or not they have this right repeating the exercise if they don’t. A little independent learning is a great thing to encourage.

Seeing the word

Children who are visual learners may like to conjure up images to help them remember their spellings, This can be great fun and stretch their imagination. ‘Friend’ can be a tricky word to spell but they could break it down into ‘fri ‘and ‘end’ and visualise frying the word END in a big pan and so in this way remembering the I comes before the E. If this sort of method works for them they may even want to draw little pictures of their images to really reinforce their learning.

A bit at a time

Breaking down words into syllables easier can make them so much easier to learn, Cartoon for example becomes Car (which most kids can spell) and then the more unusual ‘toon’ which can be focused on separately. The confidence children get from getting bits of the words right really encourages them too.